


Memory

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Minor appearances by other character, Non-Graphic Violence, SaveOikawa2k16, Tiny bits of Angst, mentions of abuse, non-explict sexual content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7961245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Condition. <br/>Ability.  <br/>Curse. </p><p>Whatever you wanted to call it, Oikawa wanted it <em>gone. </em> Randomly slipping into people's memories and reliving them as if they were your own might sound like the perfect way to get to know someone, but..</p><p>It isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

> K i l l m e   
> (Rating will change with the next chapter)

The first time it happens, he is four years old. 

The house across from his has a moving van out front, with two burly men unloading boxes and furniture, carrying them inside. He stands on a stool he has pushed up against the window, raising up on his toes while he pushes his forhead against the glass, curiosity heightening with every passing second.   
Suddenly, a little face pops out of his mother's bushes, level with his stomach. The boy has rough looking hair and has his nose all scrunched up, angry and mean looking. He mouths the word 'creep,' and Oikawa scrambles back in shock, forgetting that he's standing on a stool. He hits the ground with a thud, tail bone sending jolts of pain through his body. The stool wobbles back on two legs once, twice, and then falls towards him. He shields his face with his arms, waiting for the blow. 

He waits, but it doesn't happen. Slowly, he lowers his arms and opens his eyes. The face from the window is now inches from his, and he spots the stool sitting upright over the boy's shoulder.

"I saw you fall-" 

"You saved my life," He shouted, throwing his arms out to wrap them around the strang boy's neck. "You're a hero!" 

The room shifts around him, fading into a swirl of color. He feels light, floating and sort of buzzing. Oikawa watches in confusion as his family room rebuilds itself around him, but wrong. 

_This isn't his house- The walls are a mucus green color instead of rose pink, and the chair his grandmother loves isn't sitting near the kitchen archway- No. That's a door, not an arch, and if the flushing toilet is anything to go by, it's not even a kitchen._

_He tries to open his mouth to ask the strange woman across from him where he is, but the voice he speaks with isn't his, and the words aren't the ones he wants to say._

_"But, Mommy," This woman isn't his mother. His mother has beautiful brown hair that she always wears braided in a bun on top of her head. This lady, the one holding his hand, has a pixie cut of black curls, and piercing brown eyes that don't sooth him at all like his mother's gaze. "Daddy promised."_

_She was crying, he realized as the alien woman pulled him into an embrace. Her hands rubbed at his back and he found himself crying, too. He didn't know what for, but when he brushed the back of his hand against his cheeks, it came away wet._

_Only, that wasn't his hand. There was a faint scar from the base of his thumb to his wrist, and the skin was too tan, and it just wasn't his._

He screams and scuttles backwards, away from the boy. His hands are tan, Oikawa realizes absently, trembling from where he cowers against his grandma's chair. The other child stares at him, eyes blown wide. 

"Did you hit your head?" 

"M-MA-MAMA!" 

His mother is already running down the stairs, having been alerted by his scream. She swoops Oikawa up and examines him, glaring at the stranger in their living room, as if he were a grown man there to steal all of their possessions, rather than just a child. Oikawa hides his tear stained face in her neck and lifts his hand -his hand- to squeeze at the bun perched on the top of her head. 

~*~ 

When he tells his mom what happened, she just clicks her tongue at him and tells his sister to take him outside. Oikawa forgets about the whole ordeal in favor of playing in the sprinklers behind his house. His sister screeches when he runs inside, feet covered in mud. 

Until dinner almost a week later, he thinks nothing of it. And, then, his mother puts him on her hip as she goes to answer the doorbell one evening. 

Suddenly, their threshold is filled with four bodies, none of which Oikawa is familiar with. One of them is his mother's height, another towering over his head, casting an eerie shadow across the wall. He focuses on it instead of the person, clinging to his mother's arm as if he feared she would drop him. He casts what he hopes are subtle glances every few seconds, as his mother and chats too quickly for his young ears to understand. They end up in the family room, and he hides in her lap even after she tries to make him play with the other two children. They sit at the table coloring, eyes drifting to him when they think he isn't paying attention. 

He is, of course. 

By now he had gathered that one of the children is the boy from the window. The woman is vaguely familiar but he can't really place her, watching as the tree of a man sitting next to her twists a strand of her short, ink colored hair around his finger and gives a playful tug. She swats him but he kisses her cheek.   
Oikawa wrinkles his nose and looks away. Gross. 

Apparently, they're the family that moved in across from them- The Iwaizumi family. 

Oikawa could only avoid the other boy for so long, before his mother demanded that he show 'Hajime' his room. He grumbles and protests, but ends up doing as told. The stairs are still a challenge, and he hears his sister snicker from where she sits at the landing as he crawls up them. She had a phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear, and he hears one of her friend's high-pitched voices as he and Iwaizumi pass her. 

The other kid is silent, eyes diverting whenever Oikawa looks at him. He sighs and decides that he certainly won't be the one to start a conversation, pulling the sliding door open to his room without any grandeur. 

Iwaizumi bores holes into the back of his head as he pads across the floor, casually and discretely hides his alien plushy behind a galaxy-print pillow. 

There's a star-shaped night light plugged into his wall that has been left on. It's plugged into the outlit under his desk.  
Oikawa blushes, and mutters something about totally not being scared of the dark. He leans to turn it off but he must have over calculated, distracted by Iwaizumi's glare. His nose slams into the edge of his desk. He yelps and stumbles backwards, hand clutching as his face as warm blood coats his fingers. 

"Fuck," Oikawa's eyes go wide at Iwaizumi's usage of the word. He's never hear anyone younger than his mother say something like that and he's sure that it's against some law. He doesn't care if Iwaizumi goes to prison. This is his fault. 

Iwaizumi picks up a discarded shirt and presses it towards him, a hand reaching out to move Oikawa's own. 

The buzz erupts a lot faster this time, and the room doesn't spin pleasantly. It's like he's being twisted in a taffy maker, Oikawa things, as his surroundings once again melt away and reform. 

_His heart is pounding against his chest. He draws his knees closer to his chest and wraps his arms tighter around the little girl cowering next to him where they sit in the closet._

_Something slams against the door, twice. Hard. His legs almost give where he's using them to keep the door shut. The coats above the shake as another blow rattles the whole frame. The girl- His sister, something supplies,- whimpers beside him._

_"Hajime, I'm scared."_

_He doesn't reply. The weight on the other side is back to steadily pushing, gaining inch by inch. He fights back a sob and shoves back, hard. The person fighting for entrance lets out a guttural scream and thrashs, cursing them. He tries to cover his sister's ears against the vulgarity being spat at them, but it's impossible. His main focus has to be on the door._

_The man on the other side goes silent. His legs relax._

_Too soon. The door swings open and his sister screams._

He jerks away, a fine spray of blood splattering across Iwaizumi's face. His features twist in disgust as fat tears begin to pour down Oikawa's face. He doesn't understand, doesn't want to. 

Iwaizumi runs to get his mom. 

~*~ 

Five isn't really that huge of a milestone, but Oikawa's party is still grand. The inflatable water slide in his back yard draws most of the neighborhood kids. He's swamped by gifts and sits proudly while the crowd sings him happy birthday. 

The best part, though, is having his best friend sleep over. Not that they don't end up together most nights anyways, but it's still exciting. It's Oikawa's first birthday with Iwaizumi by his side and he is absolutely, positively thrilled. They climb to the roof of Oikawa's tree house to watch the sunset and then the stars- Although, Oikawa insists that they're looking for the aliens. 

He knows every constellation by heart, and by now, so does Iwaizumi. He traces them with an index finger, humming as he lets his hand fall back. 

Instead of landing on the tin roof of the tree house, it lands in Iwaizumi's palm. 

He's falling, and he thinks for a second that he really is falling. The warmth next to him is gone, brutally ripped away. It hasn't happened since the incident with the night light. (He wonders, faintly, what 'it' even is.) 

_The lady sitting on the ground in front of him is wearing a two-piece dress suit, the cranberry color contrasting loudly with the pale of her skin. Her glasses are perched on the edge of her nose, and she regards him with a smile that reminds him of the snake in his animals picture book. She scribbles something on a paper and opens her mouth to speak._

_The door to the dimly lit office busts open after two quick knocks. A nurse dressed pink scrubs holds a Godzilla plushy under her arm._

_"Iwa-chan," Her voice is gently, and she offers him a hand. "Your mother is here to pick you up. Ready to go home?"_

_"Is he going to be there?"_

_The image of a man as tall as a tree, a lengthy shadow, and a trembling body in a coat closet echo like screams inside his head._

_"No, baby," She pulls him off of the bed and lifts him onto her hip, pressing the stuffed Godzilla into his arms. "Remember what mommy told you? He's not going to be around anymore. No need to worry, Iwa-chan."_

_He wrinkles his nose, but clutches Godzilla close to his chest. It smells like a hospital._

Oikawa doesn't jerk away this time, but as the stars reappear into his vision, he slowly moves his arm to lay across his own stomach. 

"Iwa-chan," He tests, voice wavering a bit. "Let's go inside. I wanna watch E.T. again!" 

Iwaizumi sits up and peers down at him. "Don't call me that, idiot. We're not babies." He doesn't mention that they've already watched that movie that week. 

~*~

"Iwa-Chan, don't scrunch your face up like that or you'll get wrinkles! And then you'll never be as pretty as me." 

He plopped down onto the bench and popped open his lunch, carefully unwrapping his chopsticks. Iwaizumi didn't look up from his math book. 

"Ooo~ Did somebody skip out on their homework last night?" He chewed a piece of pork, fingers tapping against the side of Iwaizumi's book. "Tsk, tsk. I'll have to tell Sensei. His good-egg image of you will be shattered so soon, what a shame!" 

"I hate you," He hissed, and brought his foot down on Oikawa's toe. 

The boy screeched and rocketed up, barly remembering to grab his lunch so that it didn't spill. He turned to lecture Iwaizumi about being rude, just as someone slammed into him from behind. Something wet splashed against his neck, and seconds later, he could feel whatever it was soaking through his blazer. A hand clutched his arm as the offender balanced themselves. 

Oikawa, now in his last year of junior high, had learned only a fraction more about his condition- Ability. Curse. Whatever you wanted to call it. 

It didn't always happen. More often than not, it just didn't. It was sporadic, without any precursor or warning signs. Despite his original assumptions, it could happen with anyone, not just Iwaizumi.   
He must have slipped into other people's memories about a hundred times now. 

He was still notably startled when the ground gave way under his feet and he was sent toppling. 

_Soft hands clutched his, pulling him towards an ice cream stand._

_A red balloon._

_A girl with two braids, brown eyes. She smiles._

__Mother. __

_The feeling of happiness bubbles inside his chest like stew, warm, and a laugh erupts from him._

_A teddy bear missing an eye, a man with a mustache._

_The girl isn't smiling, but screaming at the man, hands pounding against his chests. He is small where he presses against the couch, trying to blend with the shadows._

_Ice cream melting on a board walk, the disappointment of a ruined treat. The man apologizes for accidentally knocking him over, offers to buy another one.  
He smiles. Oikawa feels his blood turn to ice. _

_The sound of glass breaking, police announcing their arrival as they bang at the door._

Iwaizumi is shaking him, eyes blown wide. When had he fallen on the ground? A girl stands to his left, clutching a busted milk carton. He tries to smile at her, but his lips won't move right and a sob erupts from his throat. 

Sometimes, the memories were fragmented, torn into shreds by time or the desire to bury.

Most of the time they were mundane, without any tied emotions. A woman who pinches his cheek in the grocery school loans him the image of watering hose plants. The kid who tags him during recess unknowingly lets him in on where he hides his candy stash. 

But, sometimes, they were too much. 

He stopped trying to tell people about the memories when his dad pulled him aside and told him that his imagination was getting out of hand. Oikawa never did get around to explaining it to Iwaizumi. 

He clutches at the front of his shirt and pulls him down, sobbing into his shoulder. Iwaizumi apologizes to the girl, and she darts off.

"Oikawa-" 

He stiffens, tries to curl in on himself. 

"Hey, come on. Breathe. Count with me. Ten, nine, eight.." He makes it to zero and starts over, fingers tracing Oikawa's spine while he recites numbers. He stars again, and this time Oikawa joins him on eight. 

"-three, two, one," They finish together. He disentangles himself and scoots back, staring at where he dropped his lunch. 

"Iwa-chan," He whispers, pulling his knees to his chest, "I think I want to go home for the rest of the day-" 

He squawks when he looks up to find Iwaizumi on his phone. His friend huffs and clicks it off. 

"Already told your mom, Trashykawa. Let's go." 

~*~ 

He never gets around to telling him. 

They sit side by side at the annual team sleepover, Mattsun sprawled across their legs. His head is in Makki's lap, his curls mixing with the thick brown of the blanket tossed over all three of them.

Their second year of high school has been absolutely uneventful thus far. Oikawa hasn't had anymore bad episodes so far, which he was glad for. He'd come so close to spilling to all to his Iwa-Chan, which surely would have ruined their friendship. He was probably insane. 

He leaned against Iwaizumi and yawned loudly as the credits rolled. Mattsun is snoring, mouth open. Makki is stuffing cheese puffs into his cheek, snickering. 

Oikawa closes his eyes, feeling a bit nostalgic. Iwaizumi and him have always been this close. It just sort of happened. He wouldn't change it for the world. 

It was about a year ago that he realized- 

Fingers card through his hair. 

_His showers are never this hot. He's going to have to scold Iwaizumi later about destroying his skin, he thinks, but then the memory fully settles around him. The steam is swirling around him, and-_

_Oh, god. This is definitely not a memory he should be in. (Not, of course, that he should invade any memory..)_

_Iwaizumi's hand jerks up and down steadily, his forehead is leaned against the wall, a steady spray of water against his back. His mouth opens in a moan-_

_"Oikawa-"_

_Shit._

_"Tooru, fuck.." He feels the echo of guilt, quickly tossed away but the pleasure coursing through him. He moans again, corckscrewing his hand. His hips jerk forward and his knees almost go put as white swims across his vision._

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, no, he definitely wasn't supposed to see that-_

It was about a year ago that he realized he wanted to be more than just friends. 

The thought continued seamlessly as if he'd never been interrupted. He's suddenly all too aware of Iwaizumi pressed against him. The blanket is too hot. 

He excuses himself to the bathroom and then tells the captain that he's not feeling great, he's going to head home. Iwaizumi stares at him when he declines the offer to walk with him. 

Oikawa nearly collides with his sistet as she exits his house. His eyes are blurred with hot tears, and he collapses against the stairs with her, confused and frustrated. 

He doesn't go to practice the next day, and declines all of Iwaizumi's calls.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: truly-gay-fish


End file.
